


Never Let them See You Bleed

by Shadsie



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Adora and Hordak figuring out who they are to each other, Angst, Drama, Gen, Illness, Pairings mentioned but not the focus, Post-Canon, Terminal Illness, a soft philosophical tone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:22:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24565312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadsie/pseuds/Shadsie
Summary: After the war, the kingdoms of Etheria and ex-Hordespeople lived in an uneasy peace.  It was most uneasy with Hordak.  When his health begins to fail again, leaving him edging on death, Entrapta finds herself at a loss for scientific solutions and calls upon Adora with her healing powers as She-Ra to save him.The question is - does Adora even truly want to?
Relationships: Catra/Adora, Entrapta/Hordak, Hordak & Adora
Comments: 74
Kudos: 342





	1. Fatigue

**Never Let Them See You Bleed  
**  
  
  
 **Chapter 1: Fatigue  
**  
  
  
The rain fell in torrents on the entire kingdom of Dryl, pounding against the walls of the Crypto Castle. The lights that were on flickered, although the fortress was never without generators should its formidable grid ever fail. A crack of thunder awakened Hordak from a dream that didn’t make very much sense – something about living in the woods with an old lady for a best friend that faded as he got his bearings. He’d never admit it, but he enjoyed such dreams because he far more often had nightmares about green pools and false promises of peace.   
  
He got out of bed and walked into a room that adjoined his bedroom – something of a miniature sanctum with various small technological projects and models and drafts on the tables for various public works. He and Entrapta enjoyed an uneasy peace with the rest of the nations and principalities of Etheria – hence the drafts for projects. It was an “atonement” of sorts to rebuild the Sea Gate and various areas of Sailineas as well as structures in the mountain kingdoms. Thaymore, for its part, refused assistance, which Hordak found fair enough. How many times had his troops rolled into that village?   
  
After lengthy deliberations in a court formed in Bright Moon, Hordak was spared execution. It wasn’t enough for everyone that had been harmed by the Etherian Horde that She-Ra had chosen to spare him. He went to trial willingly as did various former Horde members. It was the testimony of Catra, Adora and various brother-clones who had chosen to represent the community regarding life under Horde Prime that secured his more favorable fate. The clones were exonerated on the grounds that they were not acting of free will when they were an invading army. Hordak, however, had gained that aspect of conscious existence decades ago and thus had much more to answer for, although “upbringing” and a lack of early support were considered heavily in his case. Catra had many of her own reparations to give, although Hordak noted that the court favored her, likely because she was Adora’s mate. She had the freedom to travel anywhere in Etheria. His sentence was to never to leave the Kingdom of Dryl. Entrapta, for her part, was required to have escorts in most kingdoms, for people did not forget her part in the war as well.   
  
Etheria forgave, but did not forget. 

All-in-all, everyone in the Etherian Horde was given mercy in light of their various roles in saving the planet and the clones of the Galactic Horde were given the treatment of freed slaves and offers of habilitation. Hordak was playing a key role in this, having become, whether he liked it or not, a go-to therapist for his brethren who were having difficulty adjusting to living apart from a hive-mind. This was also a reason given to spare him a worse fate than a house-arrest in Dryl. There was an enclave in the hills around Talon Mountain that mistakenly held onto a belief in the return of Horde Prime, but it was very small, powerless and carefully watched. There was a group that wanted to make _him_ into the new Horde Prime, but he flat out refused the power. As it was, Hordak was confined to a single small nation that had very few people, all of whom were aware and generally accepting of his presence. The other nations welcomed and assisted anyone who wished to leave. He held no political position despite his relationship with Entrapta. If remaining quiet in a hermit-kingdom was the way to show that he had no more taste for conquest, he was content with that.   
  
Lighting flashed outside the windows. The storms had been rolling in for a solid week now and were making his bones ache. He guessed that Entrapta was in the main lab by this time in the morning. She hadn’t climbed into bed with him and seemed to be respecting his recent request for space. He held onto one of his upper arms uneasily. How long could he hide from her? He felt around the bicep. It was getting thinner. 

Hordak grunted in consternation. Knowing Entrapta, his excuses would stop working. He worried that he was hurting her by distancing himself. They were taking things slowly with touch as it was. Neither of them seemed to need it as much as most couples and they sometimes got the urge to work on something at different times. Entrapta’s dreams led her to inspiration. Hordak said that he was accustomed to spreading out full on a bed. 

He wore a set of armor during the day, although in the first few weeks of his time here, he’d taken to walking around in only a skirt. Horde Prime had restored his body to functioning order, even if scars remained. They had been hidden by his standard clone-uniform when he’d been back on the _Velvet Glove_. He’d enjoyed his newfound health, the air on his skin and the flexibility of his limbs. Then his defect asserted itself again. What a fool he was to think his health would last! Prime had given him merely a temporary fix. Hordak supposed that he hadn’t simply been killed because Prime was prideful and needed to erase him instead – either that or he’d found a need to keep him around in order to access his memories about Etheria. 

Hordak began noticing the weakness and fatigue three months ago. After that, varicose veins appeared, running themselves just beneath old scars. His muscles began atrophying again, including that terrible divide between his radius and ulna on both of his arms. They functioned due to the backup strengthening-cybernetics that had been standard in all Horde-clones. As it was, his non-organic components were why his body functioned at all. Pain and stiffness returned. He even found himself having trouble breathing even though all of his kind had backups for lungs that allowed them to exist in no less than the vacuum of space for extended periods of time.   
  
His condition was worsening and he had yet to find a way to stave it off. That was the most important of projects that sat in his personal laboratory. He did his best to keep it hidden from Entrapta, although he knew that she would uncover it eventually.   
  
He did not wish to trouble her. She had enough on her plate in regards to negotiations with the other Princesses and he did not want to see the pain in her eyes.   
  
He felt one of his knees twitch. He would have to tell her – but when and how? How long could he put it off just to watch her smile a little longer?   
  
The thunder boomed. He felt lightheaded. Before he knew it, his head was spinning and the cold gray floor was coming up to meet him.   
  
There were footsteps in one of the doorways to a corridor, followed by a familiar voice.   
  
“Hordak?”   
  
The darkness on the edges of his vision closed in on him.  
  
“HORDAK!” 


	2. Fever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adora couldn’t help but think that he was as tall as he ever was, yet he looked so small.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I went with the most popular fan-name for Wrong Hordak with this, "Kadroh." You may imagine any preferred name for him in its place if you wish.

**Never Let Them See You Bleed  
**  
  
  
 **Chapter 2: Fever  
**  
  
  
Adora awakened to a gentle computerized ringing noise. She was groggy, half in dream, and she tried to ignore the sound, burying her face into the back of Catra’s mane. The other girl’s pleasantly-warm body stirred against hers.   
  
“Answer it, will ya?”   
  
Adora shook herself awake and grabbed the blinking communication-pad from the bedside table. When she answered the call she almost jumped as she was greeted by a pair of glowing lenses.   
  
“Entrapta?” she half-yawned. “What are you calling this early for?” 

Catra had stuffed a pillow over her head. “She probably blew up half of Dryl or something. Wake me later.”   
  
“Adora! Great, I got you!” Entrapta said, her tone urgent and somewhat off of her usual cheerfulness.   
  
“Yeah? What is it that you need?”   
  
The scientist fidgeted on the other side of the screen, twirling the ends of her hair together. “I…I need you to come to Dryl. Bring Wrong Hordak, too – but just you guys, alright?”   
  
“He’s going by Kadroh now. Wrong Hordak, I mean.”   
  
“Oh, he finally chose a name? Good! Anyway, I need you two.”   
  
“Entrapta, is something the matter? Adora asked, noting the odd inflection in her voice. Entrapta sounded upset, but like she was trying to hide it. “And could you put up your mask? You really spooked me when I answered.”   
  
Entrapta sniffled as she gently tipped the mask up with a tendril of hair. Her eyes were puffy and face red beneath wet cheeks. She didn’t answer.   
  
“Entrapta, tell me what’s wrong!”   
  
“It might be good news to you, but it’s not to me. Still, I was hoping that you might help. It’s about Hordak.”   
  
“Is he… hurting you?”   
  
Catra, who was overhearing the conversation, whether she liked it or not - openly laughed. Adora shot her a glare.   
  
“Oh, come on, like he even could!” she guffawed.   
  
“Huh?” Adora questioned, holding the com-pad helplessly in her hands and looking back and forth between her friend and her lover.   
  
“You left the Horde too soon, Adora,” Catra continued. “Turns out Hordak’s all bark and no bite – and Entrapta _totally_ dominates him. You shouldn’t even worry about stuff like that. I saw them get into an argument about borrowing tools once and she had him backed against a wall and he was just staring and twitching those pointy ears of his like an idiot! It was hilarious!”   
  
“I need to talk with Adora about Hordak.” Entrapta was obviously struggling to find the right words. She tipped her mask back down.   
  
“Catra, I think I need to have this conversation in private. I’ll be right out.”   
  
“Fine. I’ll find someone else to cuddle.”   
  
Melog yawned and stretched from their place on the rug beside the bed and climbed up into it. Catra wrapped her arms around them.   
  
With that, Adora went into the bathroom and shut the door. She turned on the water in the sink to create a soft noise-barrier for good measure. “Alright, Entrapta, we’re private now. What’s going on?”

“Sooo,” Entrapta said, penting her fingers – her gloved ones rather than ones made of hair this time – “I’ve exhausted all avenues of science to solve the problem and we could use a little bit of She-Ra healing magic if we can get it…If you’re willing to help us, that is.”   
  
“I’m a little confused, Entrapta.”   
  
Entrapta tipped her mask up again, revealing her careworn face. “Hordak is dying. He’s very sick and I need some help with him.”   
  
“What?”   
  
Adora was stricken. She didn’t know what to do with this information. Catra had mentioned him having health problems at some point, which had surprised her, given the image of the towering and powerful beast of a man she’d grown up with. The last she’d seen him, he’d been in reasonably good shape – restored to “standard specifications” as some of her new clone-friends in the castle had termed it whenever they opened up any about their origins. She didn’t know how to feel, either. On one hand, she and Hordak had a connection – something she’d felt when she’d purged the shadow that had been Horde Prime from his body. They were two lost souls who ultimately stood defiant of their supposed destinies. On the other, she never simply forgot the damage he had done to Etheria and its people. He was living peaceably now, complying with his sentence, but reminders of him, even a mention of his name was like touching an old scar.   
  
Adora did not hate him, but she knew that she didn’t have an entirely positive sentiment for him, either. She never regretted freeing his mind, or seeing him as a person who needed his own space rather than hard punishment. Still, she did not have the ability to grieve him. The mixed nature of her feelings was disconcerting. Entrapta’s face said everything she needed to know.   
  
Of course she was going to try to help, if she could – for Entrapta’s sake.   
  
“I’m coming,” Adora assured her friend. Entrapta unceremoniously hung up the call.   
  
“So, what’s going on?” Catra asked.   
  
“I’ve gotta pack,” Adora said. “I’m headed to Dryl with Kadroh – Just us.”   
  
“I should come with you, make sure you don’t get lost in that castle or caught in a trap.”   
  
“No, Catra. Entrapta seemed pretty serious about just wanting us. Can you take care of yourself around here for a few days?”   
  
“What’s even going on over there?”   
  
“I can’t tell you. Maybe later, not yet.”   
  
“If she and Hordak are having a baby, don’t volunteer us to baby-sit, please.”   
  
Adora laughed. “I promise I won’t.”   
  
A knock came on the bedroom door. “Um, ladies, are you, as they say, decent?”   
  
Adora pulled a set of pants on over her under-shorts and discarded her loose bed-shirt for a proper daytime-shirt. Catra curled up in the bedcover and cuddled close to Melog.   
  
“Um…yeah? Kadroh?” Adora answered. She opened the door to see the Horde-clone standing in a flour-dusted apron.   
  
“I made chocolate-chip waffles!” he said with an excited smile and a wink. “They’re your favorite, right? I didn’t want you to miss out on them! Glimmer and Bow are already in the dining hall!”   
  
“Thanks, Kadroh. I need to talk to you about something, okay?”   
  
Catra curled back into bed, just not a morning person these days, despite her previous military-lifestyle. “Twenty more minutes…is that too much to ask?”   
  
“But… you might miss the waffles!”   
  
“She won’t, Kadroh. I’m sure you made enough.” 

  
  


* * *

Adora and Kadroh rode to Dryl astride Swift Wind. Kadroh and the alicorn sang songs about freedom the entire way and Adora couldn’t help but laugh and join in. The two had strangely bonded, to the point that Adora left them “in each other’s care” whenever she went off with her friends on a space-journey. Swift Wind still wasn’t particularly comfortable with the idea of going into space and Kadroh felt like he had important work on Etheria, both among his people and in new chosen profession.   
  
The clone who was once known merely as “Wrong Hordak” had begun to define himself as an accomplished chef. Some of this skill had come from one of his previous roles in service to Horde Prime. He’d worked in the galley of the _Velvet Glove_ and had the memories of recipes from many worlds in his databanks. Horde Prime might have subsisted mainly on amniotic fluid, but recipes were one of the things that he’d collect from conquered worlds. As it was, Kadroh was learning about Etherian cuisine and had taken up learning from the chefs at Castle Bright Moon. He’d started out in the kitchen of the Crypto Castle with Entrapta’s staff and traveled to various courts and villages to learn different kinds of cooking. He had gained a few followers. His clone cooking-buddies, Random, Guy and Yuuthere remained in Bright Moon. They specialized in vegetarian dishes simply because, in their newfound life, they didn’t want to risk accidentally cooking anything _sapient_. They had some rather bad memories left over from the part of their lives when they didn’t question anything.   
  
Kadroh had taken to self-ornamentation to the extreme in some people’s opinion. Presently, his hair was down to his chin, parted to one side and was pinker than Glimmer’s. He had dyed it hot-pink. His eyes remained green, mostly because he thought electric-green looked nice with the hot-pink hair. As he clung to Adora on the back of Swift Wind, he was clad in acid-wash blue jeans, hi-top shoes and a shirt that matched the color of his hair with the word “Rad!” scrawled in blue on the front.   
  
Only the best presentation to visit Auntie Entrapta and his beloved brother, Hordak, First of the Named!   
  
They landed at the gates of the Crypto Castle to be greeted by the kitchen-staff and Emily.   
  
“You came!” Sodapop said. “Good, good! The Princess has been most distraught.”   
  
“We were afraid that she’d arm the traps again in a fit of agitation!” the Busgirl added.   
  
“Don’t worry,” the Baker said. “You’re important expected guests so she disabled them. Well, most of ‘em. Maybe you can convince her to keep it that way?”   
  
“I’ll try,” Adora said with a smile. She patted Swift Wind on the neck as Kadroh slid off with their light travel bags. He immediately walked over to Emily, who pumped herself up and down on her legs and beeped at him.   
  
He gently placed a palm atop her chassis. “I missed you, too!” he chimed.   
  
“I’m a…. gonna go find an apple orchard somewhere,” Swift Wind announced. “If you need me, don’t hesitate to call out SWIIIIIFT WIND!”   
  
Adora laughed, “Will do, Swifty, will do.” She watched as he took off back into the sky.   
  
Sodapop took the travel-bags from Kadroh, who handed them over gently.   
  
“Oh, just follow Emily,” Baker said, hands on her hips. “She’ll lead the way – unless you want to eat first. The food might be tiny, but we’ve got plenty of it.”   
  
“No, we’re fine, thanks.”   
  
“I can’t wait to cook with you again!” Kadroh said, winking, “But my brother needs me first! Adora said that he wasn’t feeling well.”   
  
Everyone’s faces got an awkward pall as they looked sideways and to the ground.   
  
Adora and Kadroh followed a toddling Emily through winding corridors and up a stairwell. A door opened for the robot and the group found themselves in a large bedroom. Various machines were lined up along a wall, beeping and humming softly.   
  
Before anyone could say anything, Entrapta looked up from where she was hunched over the bed. “Hey! You came!” she greeted. As her massive hair parted a view, Adora shivered and put a hand to her mouth. Kadroh stared, shocked still.   
  
There Hordak was on the bed, covered to his chest in a purple duvet with gear-designs on it. One skeletal-looking arm was draped over the cover, hand weakly clenching into the fabric. His hair was slick with sweat and his eyes were tightly closed. Various tubes and cables were plugged into his shoulders and snaked under the bed-covering.   
  
Adora couldn’t help but think that he was as tall as he ever was, yet he looked so small.   
  
“I… I have to go now,” Kadroh said shakily. “I’ll…I’ll be back. Don’t worry. I just need to go outside for a moment.”   
  
“Kadroh!” Adora yelped, but he had already pushed past Emily and was out the door. He leapt atop the huge hallway-sweeping robot that was making its rounds and grabbed onto it for a ride.   
  
“Hi-ho, Scruffy! Away!”   
  
Adora looked from the hall to Hordak to Entrapta. “I wonder what that is about.”  
  
“He named the hall-bot Scruffy when he was here,” Entrapta answered easily, “which is funny, because I usually name them, but I never got around to that one. I really like the name, though.”   
  
Adora approached the bed. “Oh, Entrapta… How long has he been like this?”   
  
“I found him collapsed on the floor over there three days ago. I’ve been trying everything! Analyzing everything! Not even his armor is working right now! He’s had a fever and chills since last night – first one, then the other.”   
  
“Three days,” Adora whispered, “He couldn’t have gotten this skinny and get his arms…like that… in only three days...?”   
  
“Oh, he’s had that for a while now,” Entrapta said, jumping around the bed and adjusting a clear IV-feed and a tube with green liquid that appeared to be feeding into Hordak’s abdominal-area. She looked up at a reading on one of the computer-screens and fiddled with a wire attached to a sticky-pad just below his clavicle.   
  
Adora just watched.   
  
“Well, it went away after his Big Brother reconditioned him, but then it came back. It’s a genetic defect that causes a neurological and muscular disorder – mostly a progressive atrophy. I don’t have a name for it yet. Hordak-Syndrome?” Entrapta stuck a coil of hair under her chin. “No… too on the nose – which would be rude because he doesn’t have one! Anyway, I built him that exoskeltal-armor to hold him together better because his old one had gotten damaged and wasn’t working nearly as well.”   
  
“Entrapta!” Adora snapped, “How long has this been going on?”   
  
Magenta eyes looked back at hers. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know. At least as long as he’s been on Etheria, though. He said that Horde Prime originally cast him out for his defects.”   
  
“I thought the story behind that was his free will?”   
  
“That, too.” Entrapta shook her hands and her hair twitched. “We were trying to find ways to stave it off together, possibly cure him, while working on the Portal…then Catra…then Horde Prime…and…and…”   
  
“Calm down, Entrapta. Take a breath.”   
  
Entrapta made a seat of her hair and sat down on it, opposite Hordak’s bed from Adora. She retrieved a wet cloth from who-knows-where and swabbed down his forehead and one side of his face with a practiced grace, rolling the cloth over the tip of one ear.   
  
“He was really healthy for a while. We thought that the reconditioning had cured him, but the base-defect remains and he… he hid it from me! He must have…just been getting worse and worse until three days ago! Now it might be too late!”   
  
Entrapta let out a little wincing cry and Adora flinched from it.   
  
“It is gonna be okay, Entrapta,” she attempted to comfort. “That’s why I’m here, right?”   
  
“Uh-huh,” Entrapta nodded through her tears before tipping her mask down. “I thought maybe She-Ra could help.”   
  
Hordak weakly stirred. His eyes opened to red slits.   
  
“Little Adora?” he rasped. “My…how you’ve grown…”   
  
“Yes! She’s here to help you!” Entrapta said as she curled a lock of hair gingerly over the wrist of his exposed arm.   
  
Adora was taken aback as he suddenly growled. “The loathsome insects are still on the walls! Make them go away!”   
  
“I…don’t see any bugs,” Adora said absently, looking around any danger. Too many sessions against Light Hope’s training-spiders, she supposed.   
  
“He’s been delirious,” Entrapta explained. She continued swabbing him and encouraged him to lie still with two tendrils of hair. “Hopefully the fever will break soon. I don’t think he can take much more of it before permanent brain-damage sets in.”   
  
Kadroh returned carrying a bunch of Drylian-mountain wildflowers in his hand. He looked down and his ears dipped. To Adora and Entrapta’s surprise, he boldly approached the bed, pried up Hordak’s arm and tucked the flowers under his hand. He stood at the foot of the bed, keeping his eyes to the floor and his ears low.   
  
“Kadroh?” Adora ventured.   
  
“I – I…” he began. “I’ve seen this defect before.”   
  
Entrapta put up her mask and lightly bounced on her hair, her interest peaked.   
  
“Big Br- Horde Prime… he just sent any of our number who had it out to achieve a final glory for him. I’ve never seen it so…much! Just a bit of off-color skin. It is…it is death! And…and…”   
  
“It’s okay,” Entrapta encouraged, “you can tell me everything! Though I don’t know what this has to do with flowers.”   
  
“When I was in Bright Moon, I saw Queen Glimmer and Mister Micah place flowers at a monument for Queen Angella? When I asked about it, they told me that people give flowers to dead people as a sign of respect.”   
  
Hordak’s claws clenched over the flowers. “I am not dead,” he growled through clenched teeth.   
  
Entrapta hastily gathered up the flowers in a lock of hair. “It’s okay, Kadroh. I’ll get a vase.”   
  
Adora patted the awkward Horde-clone on the shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Flowers are also for sick people. We give each other flowers as get well gifts, too, to brighten someone’s room.”   
  
Kadroh’s ears perked. “So, I didn’t mess up?”   
  
“No, no. I’m sure Hordak will thank you when he gets to be a little more coherent.”   
  
Adora felt like that was a lie, but would do anything to keep the fresher-to-Etherian-culture clone from being crestfallen.   
  
Entrapta had left the room briefly and had returned with a water-filled vase. She set the vase with flowers onto a small bedside table she’d dragged in with her hair. Kadroh gave her a worried look.   
  
“Did you ask me to come here to say goodbye to my brother?”   
  
“No,” Entrapta said brightly. “I wanted you to come because I need your blood!”


	3. Weakness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hordak regarded Adora with a frown. “You failed to ‘cure’ me when you cast Horde Prime out. You gave me my mind back and I am forever grateful, but you need do no more for me.” 
> 
> “I should try.” 
> 
> “Why would you? I was your enemy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I used some of the biomedical analysis of Hordak done by tumblr-user cruelfeline for this. I also have her to thank for the clone-character name "Yudi." (It is what she named the clone that harassed Catra and was the first one seen possessed by Horde Prime). "Pickles" is the name that I gave on a tumblr-thread to the clone that the Rebellion captured in Season 5, Episode 1. 
> 
> Other original characters referenced are just random OCs - no connection to any of the She-Ra or Masters of the Universe canons.

**Never Let Them See You Bleed  
**  
  
  
 **Chapter 3: Weakness  
**  
  
  
“His blood?!” Adora exclaimed. She held her hands out, ready to defend Kadroh. “I am not going to let you sacrifice Kadroh and drain his blood!”   
  
Entrapta gave her a puzzled look. “I’m not going to harm him,” she explained. “Haven’t you heard of blood-donation before? It doesn’t even hurt more than a little pinch. He’ll be fine and he’ll even get a cookie after it.”   
  
Kadroh was thoroughly confused. He looked back and forth between the panicked Adora and the calm Entrapta, not knowing what to think other than the fact that he liked cookies.   
  
Entrapta sighed. “I’ll let you watch me do it if you want to, okay? That way you’ll know that I’m not hurting him. Actually, I just need a small sample first, to check antibodies, platelets, nano-bots, et-cetera.”   
  
“Nano-bots?” Adora asked.   
  
Suddenly, Entrapta was in her face, hands out in excited fists beside her, bouncing on her hair. Her eyes were wide and sparkly and she was quivering. “Teeny-tiny robots!” she happily squeaked. “Oh! You don’t know about the clone-anatomy studies I’ve done, do you?”   
  
“No, I don’t. You haven’t um… hurt anyone, have you?”   
  
Entrapta waved her off with her hair. “No, no,” she tried to assure. “Some of the clones have volunteered information and have let me take cell-samples from them! And I’ve learned a lot from Hordak’s records. I think I can learn even more if we go up to the mother-ship and I can access one of Prime’s old bodies! I’ve done a bit of mild vivisection on Hordak, too!”   
  
Adora winced and grit her teeth. “You…cut him open?”   
  
“I asked him if he could and he let me! Nothing major - just an exploration of the mechanical structures in one of his arms and some tinkering around one of his abdominal-ports. We used a powerful numbing agent and painkillers – some stuff that he devised for himself because most things that we use don’t work for him. We’ve gotta share that with the other kingdoms, right? If any of the clones get hurt, they’ll need it for surgery. Anyway, that was a long time ago, back in the Fright Zone.”   
  
Adora held up a finger. This did not stop the bombardment of information coming her way.   
  
“I found out that Hordak’s species have nano-bots – itty-bitty little robots in their blood! They build and maintain their metal and machine elements – like a supplement to cells! Hordak doesn’t have very many. They started breaking down and passing through his system when his organic components started deteriorating. Kadroh is a healthy clone, so he should have a good amount. I have a theory that if She-Ra healing-magic doesn’t work, I could give Hordak a back-up treatment of a fresh blood-transfusion and boost his nano-bot count! It might be enough to do some internal repair and get him healthier!”   
  
Entrapta blinked at her and seemed like she was done. Adora could finally get a word in.   
  
“So, you’re not going to make Kadroh some kind of sacrifice or take him apart or anything like that?”   
  
“Nope! I just need a pint of his blood. Hopefully, his nano-bots will replicate themselves within Hordak’s system and boost him. Why would you think I’d sacrifice anyone?”   
  
Adora rubbed the back of her neck in embarrassment. “Well, I grew up with Shadow Weaver. She had some… strange ideas about ritual magic.”   
  
Entrapta put her mask down and ran a cool wet cloth over Hordak’s forehead again. She made a sound of affirmation. “I think Catra said that she threatened to sacrifice her once.”   
  
Hordak groaned. Entrapta held an instrument to his forehead with her hair. “Ah!” she proclaimed, “the fever’s gone down! Good!”   
  
“Is this a part of the defect?” Adora asked.   
  
“Not directly,” Entrapta answered. “But a weak immune system is. He caught a cold – all on top of the episodes of syncope – that’s fainting - coming back and the emaciation – that’s him getting skinny. We need to keep his temperature stable.”   
  
“Do you know what he’s supposed to be?”   
  
Kadroh held up a finger, wanting to explain. Both Adora and Entrapta looked at him in surprise as he cleared his throat and stood tall. “Our basal body temperatures are like most other humanoid species!” he explained. “We run a little colder than the average human-type, just like standard humans run a little cooler than felines.”   
  
_So that’s why Catra’s so warm_ , Adora thought pleasantly.   
  
Kadroh continued, smiling, happy to share some of the old hive-mind knowledge with his friends. He had his hands on his hips, proud of himself. “Our internal mechanisms and specialized skin allow us to survive for long periods in extreme climates and in space. We even seem to be getting over our collective allergy to ambient magic!”   
  
“Oh!” Entrapta chimed. “Pickles and Yudi let me do studies on that recently!”   
  
Kadroh nodded.   
  
“Alright… I want to set up the blood-draw tools. Adora? Can you watch Hordak for a few minutes while I get Kadroh ready?”   
  
“Um…yeah.”   
  
“I’ll show you how to take a pulse on him. It’s a bit different than with anyone else.”   
  
Entrapta took one of her gloves off and pressed her fingers in between the gap in Hordak’s arm that was resting over his blanket, pressing into where the bones joined into the wrist. “The unique degeneration of his forearm led to a re-routing of his blood-vessels. Here.”   
  
Entrapta’s hair wrapped around one of Adora’s hands and guided her. Adora’s eyes widened as she not only felt the coursing blood beneath his skin, but felt the movement of something strange and stiff which she guessed were metal implants and wiring. She ran a fingertip along the white parts of his skin. It felt thin.   
  
“Careful. He’s kind of sensitive there.”   
  
Adora nodded as Entrapta grabbed Kadroh’s waist with a lock of hair and spirited them out of the room. She contemplated Hordak’s arm as he remained asleep. She couldn’t help but think of how easily he could be overpowered without his armor. All someone potentially needed was a lucky stab with a broom-handle or a staff. A quick twist could bring him to his knees in pain. A very sharp twist from even an assailant of average strength could dislocate the elbow or break one or both of the bones.   
  
She felt a little ill. On one hand, Adora felt like it was a good thing to know about this tactical advantage should Hordak ever decide to violate his sentence and return to his conquering ways, but on the other, she imagined the pain and the fear he must have felt if this was, as Entrapta had described, a condition that he’d had for a long time and had recently returned to. There were scar-lines of skin where it looked like the atrophied muscles had newly sealed. The entire configuration was just so _alien_. In an arm that she thought of as normal, the central muscles and tendons were vital to movement.   
  
_No wonder he was never on the front lines until the last part of the war, even in armor,_ she thought. 

________________________________  
  
  


 _He stood upon a shoreline, listening to the crashing waves. He was alone and the sea-breeze was cool. He felt strangely peaceful. He took notice that he did not feel any physical pain.  
  
His gaze fell upon the shore of an island across the fog. It was near enough that he could make out small landmarks, plants and people. There were a multitude of people there and they were all staring at him.   
  
He startled. He recognized some of these faces. The young man in a billowy shirt with green hair – He’d been a rebel that he’d shot down in Salineas. Others…human, deer-folk, scorpion-folk… Were they people he had killed? No, not all of them. He hadn’t killed the scorpion-king – he’d brokered a deal with him regarding the internal politics of his kingdom and he’d died in age. The man’s granddaughter had inherited his hugging-habits; that much he remembered.   
  
The man in the billowed shirt, the Salineas-captain beckoned to him with a finger.   
  
“No!” He shouted across the sea. “Not yet! I’m not ready yet!”   
_  
_________________________________  
  
  
Something was tickling his arm. It was annoying. He grunted and opened his eyes.   
  
Adora released her hold on Hordak’s arm as he awakened and suddenly scooted back in his bed, gasping and with panic in his features. His gaze shot to his arm, which he quickly tucked beneath the duvet. He scrunched up his nasal ridge and clenched his teeth. He appeared to Adora to be trying to take some kind of fighting-stance, but was so weak he could barely move. She moved back in her chair, dropping her hand, no longer touching him or even being particularly near him.   
  
“Adora…” he said, “Wha-what are you doing here?”   
  
“Entrapta called me,” she said as gently as she could. “She thought I could help you.”   
  
Hordak glared at her and beyond. “You’re not real,” he said. “I can still see the insects on the walls. You are a hallucination, like them.”   
  
“No! I’m real!” Adora asserted, “And just try to calm down. I’m not here to hurt you.”   
  
“Get. Out.”   
  
“Easy…easy.”   
  
“Get! Out!”   
  
Entrapta bustled back into the room. “You’re awake!” she exclaimed. “I heard you from the other room. You don’t have to shout, you know.” She adjusted a pillow with her hair, gently placing it beneath Hordak’s back.   
  
Hordak seemed to be trying to hide under the duvet. His red eyes peered out from where he sank under it like a suspicious cat. “What is she doing here?” he hissed.   
  
“Don’t get in a tizzy!” Entrapta playfully scolded. “Adora’s here to help us. She’s our friend, remember?”   
  
“Friend,” Hordak huffed. He shifted up in bed, with Entrapta helping him, letting the duvet drop to his waist, exposing wires, ports, intravenous tubes, his thin shoulders and his scars. He looked down. “I suppose so. We were even…when Prime was destroyed. The testimony at my trail, as well…although I don’t believe that I deserved it. I’ll leave it up to her whether or not to have me as a friend.”   
  
Adora gave him a wan smile.   
  
Hordak winced and clenched the fabric of his covering pointedly turning away from meeting Adora’s face. “Entrapta…How dare you let her see me like this.” His tone was not angry, but defeated.   
  
Entrapta had the end of a hair tail on one of his shoulders. “And how dare you let yourself go without telling me!” she retorted. “I don’t think it would have gotten this bad if you’d just said something! I called Adora out of desperation! She can help you.”   
  
“Doubtful,” Hordak muttered. “My issues are an indelible part of me. ‘In the blood’ as the local terminology would go.   
  
“I… I can try, sir.”   
  
Hordak regarded Adora with a frown. “You failed to ‘cure’ me when you cast Horde Prime out. You gave me my mind back and I am forever grateful, but you need do no more for me.”   
  
“I should try.”   
  
“Why would you? I was your enemy.”   
  
“So was Catra.” Adora smiled.   
  
“Do not expect me to kiss you.”   
  
“Did you just tell a joke?”   
  
Hordak gave her a small smile.   
  
“Are we sure the fever is gone? I’ve never heard you joke… I did not know you were capable of it.”   
  
“He’s cooled down!” Entrapta announced. She gave him a peck on the forehead.   
  
“I have been…learning many new things of late,” Hordak said.   
  
“I would like to try.” Adora repeated. She approached the bed. “Alright… trying to do this…”   
  
Hordak allowed her to take him by the cheek.   
  
Kadroh wandered back into the room, munching a small cookie. “Weren’t you gonna stick me?” he asked Entrapta. “I’d really like to get it over with.”   
  
“You’re supposed to eat the cookie and drink the juice AFTER!” she complained. “Anyway, just hold on. Adora’s going to try to heal Hordak!”   
  
Entrapta made a seat of her hair, bouncing upon it lightly. She brought out a recording device and depressed the button on it. “Hordak Degeneration-Reversal Experiment Log #15: I am witnessing Adora using her Princess of Power She-Ra magic first-hand! This is so exciting!”   
  
Adora concentrated. A white-gold glow moved up from her toes over her entire body. She remained Adora, however. She did not fully transform. She looked into Hordak’s eyes as energy covered her hand and sparked along his cheek.   
  
Images flowed through her mind’s eye. Broken tanks and broken trees on an old battlefield. Thaymor in flames with people running. Wounded Sea Elves in Salineas, boarding evacuation ships. Tired soldiers returning to the Bright Moon War Camp. Frozen trees in the Whispering Woods. Red veins running up her arm. She heard Shadow Weaver telling her a horrible, gory ghost-story. She saw her threatening Catra again and again and again. She saw Hordak’s darkened form upon a view-screen, looming over her and her friends when they were young. She heard him announcing the latest unfaithful Force Captain that was sent to Beast Island. She heard Catra describe what it felt to be caught in the atmospheric de-saturation field that he kept.   
  
The connection was suddenly broken. She stepped back. Hordak continued to stare wide-eyed at her. She looked at him, at Entrapta, then at him again.   
  
“I-I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened!”   
  
“You didn’t fully-transform,” Entrapta observed.   
  
“You’re right, I didn’t,” Adora conceded. “Like I said, I don’t have full control. I used to be able to just raise the sword, but since I do not have the original sword anymore and because She-Ra is ultimately inside me, it’s a little different now. All of the times that she’s come out, I was defending people – there was immediate danger, a sense of urgency, I guess.”   
  
“So, you need danger to turn She-Ra on?” Entrapta asked.   
  
“I…I think so…”   
  
Adora did not like Entrapta’s slowly-growing smile. 


	4. Bleeding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A chance meeting on a balcony of the Crypto Castle leads to a conversation about dreams and regrets.

**Never Let Them See You Bleed  
**  
  
  
 **Chapter 4: Bleeding  
**  
  
  
Adora huffed and hawed as she ran down endless corridors. Eyes of light shone in the darkness. The clank and whir of machinery sounded all around her. The distinctive noise of tank-treds came up from behind. She swiftly turned around and met the rigid-grin of an enormous cleaning-bot (not Scruffy, but one that Entrapta was calling “Malfunctioning Eddie”). She whipped out her staff and hit him right in his central-processing crystal. He whirred to a stop.   
  
Other automatons trembled forth upon stiff metal legs. Most of them sparked from chinks in their outer-casings or were so patched up with duct tape that barely any of their casings showed. One particularly ghastly specimen had an optic hanging out of his “eye-socket” by wires. The eye continued to glow in the dim light as it swung back and forth with the android’s movements.   
  
Grabbing-claws and other implements glimmered in the pale light. Adora’s eye caught the quick moment of a wall-mounted camera near the ceiling. She stiffened when she heard Entrapta’s voice through a paging-system.   
  
“Do you need me to up the danger-protocols?” She asked as Adora hit a sparking robot between the eyes with the butt of her staff. A pincher-claw grabbed her ankle and she screamed, turning her attention immediately toward a robot’s torso that had been climbing around on the floor.   
  
“N-no…please!” Adora begged. “I’m sure my She-Ra sense will be triggered any minute!”   
  
“Good luck! And remember to save the scrap! I want to rebuild these guys! Better! Stronger! Faster than they were before! Bwahahahaa!”   
  
“Entrapta, can we call this off?”   
  
“Nope! Entrapta out!”   
  


Adora set back to fighting. Today wasn’t much unlike the day that she had first met Entrapta, only this time, the Robot Revolution wasn’t due to the accidental unleash of a virus, but was purposeful re-programming on the scientist’s part of several of her bots that were worn down and malfunctioning and she had slated for scrapping and repair. None of them were her very close friend-robots like Emily, being of a lower artificial intelligence. Entrapta had sealed off part of the castle specifically for Adora to run around in, trapping her with bots set collectively on war-machine mode while her staff, herself, Kadroh and Hordak remained in safe-areas. Entrapta was, of course, tracking Adora with security-cameras as research.   
  
“I just had to say that She-Ra came out in times of danger!” Adora berated herself. “I couldn’t have said that she came out for ice cream! Aaaah!”   
  
She kicked another humanoid model in the face. Somehow, she was just not feeling the spirit of She-Ra happen for her. Perhaps it was because she was holding her own so well in her native form. When she saw a horde of them coming, however, she chose to run. She thought she might get to a better vantage-point. They were coming on quick, mechanical jaws chewing, metal bodies swaying back and forth. The young woman’s mind immediately turned to an old zombie-comic that she and Catra used to read as kids that had found its way into their barracks after one soldier or another had picked it up on a raid. It was gruesome and it used to scare her. She thinks it scared Catra, too, but Catra would try to hide it. They’d read that thin paper book over and over again because it was one of the few things they’d found to read in the Horde that was pure entertainment / not a textbook. They also used to laugh at it a lot because one of the panels featured a zombie that they both thought looked a lot like Hordak. They’d only known him from his screen-addresses back then, but kids making fun of the adult authority figures in their lives was a universal joy.   
  
At least the robots were unlikely to want to eat her brains – not that it was any comfort, really. Some of them had spinning saw blades. Others had blow-torches and drill-attachments. Had Entrapta designed these bots as helpers in her work or for other, less-comprehensible reasons? Entrapta being Entrapta, she could never know for sure.   
  
Adora did not watch where she was running. Suddenly, gravity failed her as she launched herself through a tower window.   
  
“Aaaaah!” she yelped as she began a swift and unexpected descent. Her training took over and she tucked over and did a back-flip. She gasped in a combination of fear, disbelief and relief as her boots landed firmly upon the floor of a balcony, no damage done to her. She looked up at a bunch of angry robot-limbs waving ineffectually out of the high window. They’d been programmed to chase her down, but apparently had enough self-preservation programming not to jump.   
  
“I take it that Entrapta’s experiment is not going as planned?”   
  
Adora startled at the low voice behind her. She turned around. There was Hordak, standing on the other side of the balcony, clad in a sleeveless black dress slit up the thighs and tight over the chest. It was what he wore beneath his currently-absent armor, but the red bat-wings and diamond pattern of the old Horde insignia that Adora remembered was absent. He was supporting himself on short metal crutches that stopped at his elbows.   
  
“Uh…” said a surprised Adora, “It-it’s not. You are no longer in bed.”   
  
“An astute observation,” Hordak grumbled. “I longed for fresh air and Entrapta insisted that getting a little air upon my skin would be a good idea.”   
  
“Any chance you can tell her to call off the robots?”   
  
Hordak balanced himself on a crutch and swiped his hand across a data-pad that was resting on a small table next to a chair on the balcony. “Done. Go ahead and sit down.”   
  
“Don’t you need the chair, sir?”   
  
“I am fine.”   
  
He crutched past her as she cautiously took a seat, situating himself close to the edge of the balcony. He looked out at the cloudy sky, seemingly fascinated by a hawk that was circling some distance away.   
  
“Oh!” the ex-commander of the Horde said, “I don’t believe I have observed that species before! I shall have to mark it down in the book.”   
  
Adora tried to ignore the dark areas around the ports that were exposed on his back. She did not know if it was rude to say anything. It would be impossible not to feel that kind of chafing, wouldn’t it? The bleeding did not look serious, but it did look painful. She instead decided to focus on his fascination with the hawk.   
  
“Mark it in a book? Are you collecting wildlife-data?”   
  
Hordak pivoted on a crutch to face her, a small smirk planted on his face. “I’ve taken up bird-watching as a hobby.”   
  
“Bird-watching?”   
  
“I find it calming. It is something that I can do within the confines of the kingdom – at least concerning Dryll’s species. It gets Entrapta and me out of the confines of the laboratory. We’ve spent many days hiking around the mountains observing behavior and cataloguing the creatures – at least… in my better days.”   
  
Adora couldn’t help but smile, herself. She tried to suppress a chuckle. “Bird-watching? You’ve’ gotta be kidding, right? The imposing Lord Hordak… bird-watching. That’s the gentlest hobby I can think of! Well, that and flower-arranging.”   
  
“I am afraid I have yet to develop that interest. I am sure that your friend, Perfuma, would be glad to show me -”   
  
“She would.”   
  
“If she didn’t recoil at the sight of me.”   
  
“Beg pardon?”   
  
Hordak looked up to the sky again, his gaze distant. “Entrapta means well, but I think that most of Etheria would sleep better at night if I simply finished this long decay.”   
  
“You want to die?”   
  
“I do not. I would like to spend more time with Entrapta, very much. I also have a sense of survival built into my very bones.” He crutched past her again, moving to another part of the balcony, letting his mildly bleeding back face her. “I did not crawl out of a crashed space ship, build a nation out of the remains of said crashed space ship, perform multiple surgeries on myself, give myself a name, and ultimately take back my name simply to give up.”   
  
He grumbled softly and his ears flattened. “But I acknowledge the damage I did to the inhabitants of this planet. I know that I am largely not forgiven and do not ask for it. I now realize that I have harmed you greatly. The show of strength you always feel you must put on… ‘Never let them see you bleed’ – it is the first rule of power. I always hid how I was while demanding peak performance of others. You see the blood, don’t you, Adora?”   
  
“Y-yes, sir… I didn’t know if I should say anything. It… didn’t look serious… would you like me to get something to clean you up with? Or find Entrapta?”   
  
“No. I’ll let Entrapta handle it when she is done changing the bed-sheets if I cannot manage it myself. You may…damage me further. The skin around the ports has been wearing thin of late. It bothers me much less than the ache in my bones and the fact that I cannot seem to digest anything properly, amniotic-fluid infusions aside.”   
  


Adora tried not to shudder. She didn’t like seeing anyone in pain – at least not in a non-combat situation and Hordak’s descriptions were unnerving.   
  
“Has…has Entrapta been making any progress?”   
  
Hordak turned his eyes to the balcony edge and below. “I have a pint of Kadroh in me. Thanks to him I am well enough to be out here. The last I saw of him, he was passed out on one of the couches.” Hordak suddenly laughed. “To think – an exalted brother of Horde Prime, created for the battle, born to the slaughter, would be so fearful at the sight of a paltry amount of his own blood!”   
  
“Mermista has that problem,” Adora confessed, “Hemo-phobia, I think it’s called?”  
  
“He must have been fresh,” Hordak mused. “A little brother who had yet to see his first battle. It has been difficult to tell, since the connection has been lost.”   
  
“No,” Adora said.   
  
“Hmm?” Hordak turned around.   
  
“Kadroh’s been in battle. Well, with the Rebellion, obviously, but before that, too. He said so.”   
  
“Really?”   
  
“He wakes up in the night sometimes… from dreams he has. I don’t think he’s been in battle very much, but he’s had memories that disturb him – things he’s seen…things he’s done, when he thought they were the right thing to do. Catra has dreams like that, too.”   
  
“How often?”   
  
“At least once a week with Catra. They used to happen every night, but stopped when Melog would climb up into bed with us. Melog knows when to...um… leave us alone – and they know when Catra needs them. With Kadroh, it’s hard to tell. He’s awakened screaming loud enough to be heard from our bedroom twice. The rest of the time… he says nothing, but I see him looking tired a lot. I think he hides how many bad nights he has. He…he’s had peaceful rests, though. Sometimes, Glimmer and Bow and Catra and I will have sleepovers with him there and he always falls asleep before we start telling ghost stories. He’s been peaceful in our company.”   
  
“I have been having vivid dreams,” Hordak confessed. “They have been strange to me. I usually do not dream, or if I do, I do not remember them. I am unaccustomed to much sleep and used to take rest upon a strict schedule. It seems my requirement has increased.”   
  
“Last night, I dreamed of a dancing pineapple that called himself Herbert,” Adora offered. “He didn’t want me to put him in a fruit salad. Of course I wasn’t, because the last time I tried to make a fruit salad I burned it…somehow. I’m never gonna forget that smell.”   
  
“I have been dreaming of the dead,” Hordak sighed. “I have been seeing them, calling to me…sometimes shouting. Mostly, they have been beings that I’ve killed – that I remember killing.”   
  
Adora sat ramrod straight, her cautious smile turning into a frown.   
  


Hordak turned to face her and balanced on one crutch, holding his free hand to the center of his chest. His eyes were slightly widened as if he was imploring something of her. “I don’t feel…anything,” he said, curling his hand out. “I suppose I feel defiant, because I do not want to join them yet, but other than that… I think that I am supposed to feel a great degree of remorse, sorrow – but I just cannot.”   
  
Adora’s eyes narrowed. “Are you still proud?”   
  
“No,” Hordak answered, turning his face away, shaking his limp hair. “I am not proud of what I have done to them. But neither can I feel the kind of regret that I think is proper. War is war. I regret that I wasted so much time and energy to deliver unto Horde Prime a planet that he had no interest in until he learned of its secret weapon. I became a mere shadow, play-acting at being him, deluding myself that I was faithful. I failed utterly and yet I cannot feel the kind of pain for the lives I destroyed that I think those that remain on this planet want me to feel. I operated on a motive of survival and I simply do not feel the emotions that I think I am ‘supposed’ to. Perhaps my brain is not fit for it. I think too much in strategy and logic and garbled memories that I cannot trust.”   
  
“You… wouldn’t do everything over again if you had the chance, knowing what you know now, right?”   
  
“Of course not. I lived for conquest because it was the only life I’d known. Presently, the prospect is quite bitter. I did not enjoy the many distractions of running the Fright Zone. Etherians are an unruly people and difficult to keep in line. I knew of the jokes at my expense whispered in the halls. Oh, don’t look so surprised, Adora! Imp saw, heard and recorded all! I couldn’t exactly take everyone to task for their indirect disrespect because I wouldn’t have had an army left!”   
  
“Shadow Weaver would have turned us all inside-out if she’d heard some of the things said about her.”   
  
“She never made a magical-equivalent to Imp.”   
  
“I am glad of that, at least.”   
  
There was a long pause between them. Hordak looked at Adora seriously. He seemed to be very tired.   
  
“You must understand something, Adora,” he said softly. “I do not wish for conquest, weapons or battle any longer, but all the same, I cannot grieve. I have tried generating the correct emotion, but it just will not come. I am aware of my standing on this planet. Catra was instrumental in almost destroying all life on it when she pulled the lever on the portal-machine without my go-ahead and she has fought in battle beside me and yet she escapes blame because I was the founder, the head of the Horde. She is young and also your bride, and so much of the world has chosen to see Catra the way you see Catra.”   
  
Adora raised her hand to speak, but then let it fall. There was no lie in Hordak’s words.   
  
“I have not been given that luxury. I do not think that I deserve it. I would like you to do something, former-cadet.”   
  
“Yes, sir?”   
  
“I would like you to tell your people – and all on Etheria who will listen that they have nothing more to worry about from me. Spread the news of my death far and wide so that this world will finally feel at peace.”   
  
“But sir!”   
  
He crutched past her, heading back toward his chambers, bleeding back toward her. “This world will soon have nothing to worry about from me.”   
  
  
  



	5. Soreness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adora catches Hordak in a vulnerable positions and is surprised at how much of a normal person he is starting to become in her eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter contains icky descriptions of cyborg-alien surgery. Don't read this while eating if you are sensitive.

**Never Let Them See You Bleed  
**  
  
  
 **Chapter 5: Soreness  
**  
  
  
She didn’t think she’d ever get entirely used to Dryl’s hospitality. Being awakened by a robot was jarring enough, but when it unceremoniously plopped a plate of food on the bedside table and beeped in apparent frustration at her late-rising – there was something uniquely unnerving about that. The little bow-tie on the butler-bot was cute, she had to admit, but much like the castle-baker, Adora was certain that she’d never get used to these things.   
  
The food was something she was also having trouble with from a purely visual standpoint. She had been given plenty in the days she’d spent here, but what came in copious amounts also came in small servings. A pair of eggs from a species of Drylian quail stared up at her like beady yellow eyes from the breakfast plate surrounded by tiny tater-tots and a blueberry mini-muffin. The only thing that appeared the “correct” size to her sensibilities was the morning tea she was given, served in a porcelain tea cup, which was to say a tiny cup.   
  
She took a look out of the window as she ate her miniature breakfast. “Huh?” she asked herself as she saw an encampment outside of the castle of Horde-clones. They milled about around white tents and most of them were wearing white clothes, though some had some color. She swiftly got through her morning routine, including her crunches and push-ups and started down the hall outside the guest room seeking someone to ask about this.   
  
“Hordak?” she asked as she turned a corner and literally bumped into a tall man with red eyes.   
  
The clone blinked and put a hand to his chest. “I am Robin,” he said slowly.   
  
“Oh, I’m sorry!” Adora quickly apologized. She hadn’t been paying close attention and hadn’t quite noticed that the clone’s blue hair was lighter and more of a gray-blue than Hordak’s. He was also dressed quite differently than Hordak’s normal wear – a feather-trimmed cape that was colored in a gradient from light gray-blue to orange with an ornamented silver pauldron on his right shoulder.   
  
Another passed in the hall, white hair, black clothes and light blue eyes. “We must tell our brothers below that we will have to wait longer,” he said to Robin.   
  
“Um…hi…” Adora said awkwardly.   
  
“She-Ra, correct?” The blue-eyed clone said with a blink.   
  
“You can call me Adora, but yes.”   
  
“Jerome,” he said with a smile.   
  
“What are all of you doing here?” Adora asked innocently.   
  
“We sought an audience with Brother Hordak and made a pilgrimage,” Robin explained with an expression of disappointment on his face and the same emotion lacing his voice. “Many of us wanted to speak with him. Some of us still need some help being alone inside, but when we arrived, the staff said that he cannot see us. The two of us were sent in to ask Lady Entrapta about it. She said that Hordak is unwell and cannot help us today.”   
  
“We’re helping him, though!” Jerome said proudly, tapping his left arm, which was wrapped in a bandage.   
  
“More…blood-donation?” Adora asked.   
  
Robin tapped his own bandaged arm, brought out from beneath his cape, rolling up a sleeve of his long-sleeved shirt, and nodded an affirmative. He was slow in his expressions while Jerome was markedly quick. Hordak’s people were still new to Etherian ways. Adora had noticed among the ones that had settled in Bright Moon that some took to body-language and facial expressions hesitantly and acted as if they were still fearful that Horde Prime would leap out of the shadows to punish them for being too emotional and some took to it enthusiastically and were exaggerated in their body-language like Kadroh was with his fondness for winking (he had learned some of the appropriate reasons for the expression, but still sometimes winked at odd times).   
  
“Lady Entrapta requested it when we arrived,” Robin answered, “for a surgery, I think?”   
  
“Where are they?” Adora asked, “Entrapta and Hordak, I mean?”   
  
“Over here!” Jerome chimed. “Just follow us!”   
  
Adora did and soon regretted it. She mentally scolded herself later for it. Why would they know this confounded castle anymore than she did? She needed Emily to help her navigate and Emily was nowhere to be seen. Adora had assumed that clones visited this place often, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything in regards to the labyrinthine nature of the place. Perhaps it was the cheerful confidence with which Jerome carried himself that had led her to trust him only to find that he was the blind leading the blind. The traps had been disabled, but the other features of the castle were built-in. They passed by the same set of paintings at least three times. They rode an escalator to nowhere. They passed through a hall of mirrors that the clones had gotten them through surprisingly quickly. Adora guessed that the pair was so used to seeing faces like their own reflected back at them that they could instantly tell what was real from what was illusion.   
  
Eventually, a tiny disc-shaped robot ran into Adora’s feet and she asked it for directions.   
  
“Hey there, little guy. Can you show us to Entrapta?”   
  
It beeped and rolled along until it stopped at a door with a sign reading “Techno-Organics Laboratory.”  
  
The young woman and her new friends strolled inside. A smell assaulted her nose – deep, putrid and, for lack of a better term, “gummy.”   
  
“Stay back!” a loud voice commanded – Entrapta’s. Emily’s distinct beeping joined her. “You aren’t sanitized! None of you should be in here without scrubs! Stay on that side of the room, okay?”   
  
The two clones looked at each other and grunted. Adora blinked, trying to get a handle on what she was seeing. Hordak lay nude on a table (not that she could see anything particularly private below his waist, the view being blocked by his thighs), clamps prying open his abdomen, with Entrapta hovering over him with a masked-mouth and full medical-gear. Even tendrils of her hair were clad in tiny blue gloves as they held a multitude of instruments.   
  
The strong odors of blood and exposed organs made Adora gag.   
  
Hordak turned his head slightly and looked at her with a devious smile. “My subordinates must have been seriously lax in their training,” he said. “You were to be a soldier, yet you cannot handle the aromas of the battlefield?”   
  
Robin and Jerome looked at her and each other and blinked, unfazed.   
  
Adora held her hands to her mouth to try to coax herself into getting a handle on her stomach. “You’re…you’re awake!” she exclaimed.   
  
“Oh, there was no need to make him sleep through this,” Entrapta explained. “The local anesthetic has him numb from the chest-down. “Besides, I need him to tell me some of what I’m working with, so I need him awake! Horde-clone medicine is an entirely new field of science to Etheria!”   
  
“What are you doing?” Adora all-but yelped. If this was some kind of kinky-vivisection thing they did for kicks, she could have lived her entire life without knowing that.   
  
“He hasn’t been digesting properly lately!” Entrapta said, hands and little hair-hands working in the depths of Hordak’s belly. “I thought that if I could reroute part of his digestive-system and give some of the mechanical-components of it a tune-up, that he’d process nutrients better. I also want to do an upgrade on his renal-backups. Clone-kidneys…or the equivalents of them, anyway, are partially-robotic! It’s all sooo fascinating! If you wash up and get a mask and gloves on, you can take a look!”   
  
“No…no thanks,” Adora said.   
  
“Emily! Hand me that little rotary saw!”   
  
Hordak was still giving Adora that strange smile. “Robin, Jerome,” he addressed his brothers, “Perhaps you should see Adora out?”   
  
Entrapta pulled something tubular, purple and squirming out of Hordak’s body.   
  
Adora felt her eyes roll back into her head and her knees fail her. 

  
  
_________________________________________

  
Sunlight was warm upon her cheek when she awakened. She grunted at the blanket that was thrown over her and shook her head awake. Adora was on a couch in a large room. Across from her, by another window was a bed where Hordak was propped up in a semi-sitting position on pillows and Entrapta was seated behind him. Emily was hunkered in a corner in a dormant state.  
  
Entrapta was rubbing her thumbs and forefingers along Hordak’s ears. His eyes were closed, his mouth was open and his head was titled back in an expression that could only be described as ecstasy. He issued a sound that Adora had never heard him make before: A soft, quiet chirp.   
  
She thought about it for a moment. She had heard that sound before. Some of the other clones made it, but only in close proximity to each other. She remembered seeing some of them in the tumultuous days just after Horde Prime’s demise cleaving close to each other and rubbing each others’ ears like they were remembering some long-forgotten instinct. It seemed to be a comfort-behavior. They chirped when they did it – It was not a bird’s chirp, but more like the sound of some kind of a bat or other small mammal. A few of them rubbed ears to excess, causing bleeding and scabbing. Some of the others stood stoic, disdainful of the brothers who had such excessive emotions as to fall into each other’s arms, insisting that the late Horde Prime would be ashamed of them.   
  
Entrapta seemed to know what she was doing. What’s more is that she had her gloves off. Adora was sure that this was the very first time that she had seen Entrapta’s bare hands and arms. They bore a number of scars, probably from errant tools and explosive experiments. She stopped when her eyes locked with Adora’s.   
  
“Oh, you’re awake! I had Robin and Jerome take you to the couch before they left. I wanted to keep an eye on you and Hordak at the same time. I hope that’s okay!”   
  
Adora sat up, shrugging the blanket off her chest. “I… hope I wasn’t interrupting anything?”   
  
“Not at all!” Entrapta put her gloves back on. Hordak looked up at her like he was disappointed. “I was just doing a little trick to keep Hordak calm while he comes off the medication. He’s gonna be a bit sore for a while. Also, isn’t he cute when he’s relaxed?”   
  
“I am not cute,” Hordak gave a low growl.   
  
Adora suppressed a chuckle. “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “You should… probably be glad that Bow isn’t here. He’d _definitely_ think you were cute. I think Catra wants to kill him sometimes because he can’t stop calling her sneezes cute.”   
  
“That one would call white fang adorable before it tried to eat him,” Hordak said.   
  
“Probably.”   
  
“I hope Catra is doing well, all things considered.”   
  
Adora was taken aback. “Really? After all that happened between you?” She looked up to Entrapta. “What do you have him on right now?”   
  
She sputtered out an incredibly long medication-name that Adora knew that she would be hopeless to pronounce if she’d tried. “It’s just a local and not as powerful as the stuff I had him on during surgery,” Entrapta explained. “It shouldn’t affect his brain in any way.”   
  
Hordak gave Adora a soft, low laugh. He clutched at his middle beneath his blanket and winced as he did so. “She was instrumental in saving my life during my trial if you remember. Despite her lies, she and I have a certain understanding. We’ve shared…certain unpleasant experiences and despite the times she turned them on me, I have to admire her tactical skills.”   
  
“Don’t let her know you heard it from me,” Adora said, “But for what it’s worth, she doesn’t hate you. Not currently, anyway. She saw…too much… aboard Prime’s ship…things that happened to you, she said. It’s not like you’re her favorite person in the world, but she’s sort of neutral toward you now.”  
  
“Entrapta has forgiven her,” Hordak grunted, “And far more easily than anyone else would have. If Entrapta had died on Beast Island, my goal would remain to turn her into a smear.”   
  
“Eh-heh…understood.”   
  
“Hordak and I were just discussing one of our projects before you woke up!” Entrapta chimed. “Do you wanna hear about it? Catra might want to help, too, once we get the math worked out.”   
  
“I’m sure that it’s…over my head.”   
  
“We’re gonna try to open a portal again! Not to the greater universe, we already did that, but to the space _between_ universes! There are so many applications!”   
  
“The Galactic Horde used warp,” Hordak elaborated, “and wormholes, but this project will be a bit different.”   
  
“Darla uses warp, but not like this! We can vastly speed up interplanetary travel!” Entrapta was now bouncing on her hair with her arms spread wide. “If it works, think of all the distant worlds we could visit! And how quickly you can bring the magic back to them! It’s gonna be so much fun! Oh, and don’t worry, I’ll double-check and triple-check my calculations… we don’t want one of those fake-universe paradoxes to happen again.”   
  
Hordak dipped his ears low. “But mere travel is not the principal reason for the project.”  
  
“Oh, yeah!” Entrapta said. “We want to see if we can find the dimensional-pocket where Queen Angella was shunted to! We may have a chance to bring her back!”   
  
Adora’s eyes went wide. “What? Really?”   
  
“Do not raise your hopes too high,” Hordak warned. “We are in the theoretical stage.”   
  
“Yeah,” Entrapta added. “The physics and mathematics are way different than with the first portal because we’re not in Despondos anymore.”   
  
“Call it a correction of a grave error,” Hordak intoned, “That is, if we succeed.”   
  
“Think of all the data the queen could give us!” Entrapta exulted. She then paced around on her hair, curling one lock to her chin. “Well, that is if she remembers anything from it. It might be like being unconscious for her. Or dead. She might be living an entire other-life, like the one in the false-dimension we were all in!”   
  
“For me, that was a lonely life, save for Imp.” Hordak mused. “Speaking of him, I wonder if we can establish contact. I would very much like to see him at least… once more.”   
  
“What happened to that thing anyway?” Adora asked.   
  
“He is not a ‘thing!” Hordak hissed.   
  
“Easy, easy,” Entrapta soothed, putting a gentle hand on Hordak’s shoulder.   
  
“Your…baby?” Adora corrected.   
  
“My…creation,” Hordak corrected her. “Originally meant to be a new body to house my consciousness as a cure for my condition, but he is…unique. His genetics are a splice of the better parts of my own to an Etherian flying-species to compensate. He was the only viable specimen to come out of my vitrines, but was wholly unsuited to his purpose. He asserted himself and rather…grew on me. The little scoundrel was adopted by your old squadron when I was taken ‘home.’ When I learned of this, they were loath to return him to me as they had grown attached and he was quite happy with them. He visits every now and again. It has been too long.”   
  
Hordak was smiling.   
  
“He’s gotten fat,” Entrapta said confidently.   
  
“He has not!” Hordak shot back.   
  
“The last time Kyle brought him here, he could barely lift him! They’ve been feeding him too much! Or not the right things! He only ate ration bars before, right? I had no idea that the Crimson Waste had enough food to make anyone chubby!” 

Adora couldn’t help but smile. It was a strange sight to behold – Entrapta and Hordak having minor, playful arguments as a couple. It was quite a contrast to her many childhood memories of Hordak as a feared and imposing figure, the stern champion against the Princess-rule that she and her friends were meant to impress and only show their best strength around. Here he was, not only sick and frail, but having an argument with a _partner_ about the well-being of his _kid._   
  
It all made him seem like a normal person rather than someone who had led an impressive military force and had almost conquered the planet.   
  
He would never be as goofy, good-natured and generally innocent as King Micah, but neither was he Horde Prime. He wasn’t even quite Shadow Weaver, and for a moment, Adora wished that Hordak had taken an interest in her care beyond picking her up from a field. She wondered how different her life would have been. Mulling it over in her head, she realized that he likely had no idea how to care for any infant save for the cloned Imp-creature, given that he was from a species lacking a childhood-stage. Her thoughts left her sore.   
  
Hordak grunted as he shifted in his bed. He held a hand over his bandaged belly. He was feeling rather sore right now, too. He gazed out the window at a Plumerian goldfinch that had landed on one of the bird feeders that Entrapta had set outside his bedroom. Adora had learned that some of the species that were native to Plumeria had migratory-patterns across Dryl.   
  
Kadroh entered the room bearing a tray with a tiny green gelatin-dish and some tiny cups of soup. “Brother!” he said, “I brought you some sustenance!  
  
Hordak grimaced and continued to watch the finch.   
  
“How are you feeling, brother?”   
  
“I’ll live, for a little while, at least.”   
  
“That’s good! That’s good! Many of us are camped outside the gates! Robin said that he and Jerome gave you some blood to help you recover from your surgery. What should I tell everyone? When can you see them?”   
  
“He needs his rest!” Entrapta insisted.   
  
“Maybe tomorrow,” Hordak said. “I regret that I cannot see anyone today. I do not wish to lose consciousness in the middle of a counseling session. I also…would rather no one see my...current weakness.”   
  
“Understood, brother.”   
  
Adora held up her hand. “I think I’d like to meet your brothers outside,” she offered to Kadroh.   
  
Kadroh’s face lit up like the morning moon. “Yes! At once! They’ll be so happy to see She-Ra!”   
  
“Well, I’m kinda… not She-Ra right now, but…yeah, let’s go!”  
  
Adora let Kadroh excitedly lead her out of the room. She looked back and the last thing she saw was Entrapta gently tucking a blanket over Hordak’s shoulders and giving him a gentle kiss atop the head. 


	6. Shortness of Breath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Goodbye, Hordak."

**Never Let Them See You Bleed  
**  
  
  
 **Chapter 6: Shortness of Breath  
**  
  
  
Adora awoke unusually early in the morning. She found herself wandering the hallways of Dryl, looking for a way down to the kitchen to ask for an early breakfast, or, more to the point, looking for a robot that could lead her there. She found Emily, who led the way on her janky legs. She paused when she saw a door to one of the laboratories open. Dim morning light was cast across a messy scene of half-built machines, scraps and diagrams – and across a sleeping Entrapta, seated at and sprawled over a work-table, her hair spilling over it and pooling at her feet.   
  


Noting the gray bags under her eyes, Adora chose not to wake her. “She was up all night, wasn’t she?” Emily softly beeped an affirmative. Computer-screens around the slumbering scientist displayed clone body-maps, including the distinctive bony form of Hordak.   
  
Adora wended her way to the doorway of his bedroom, deciding to peek in and check up on him before getting some grub. “I’ll be right out, Emily,” she told her robot-companion.   
  
She entered quietly, so as to not awaken the room’s occupant even though she had no idea what Hordak’s sleeping-schedule actually was. Machines gently hummed and screens lit the body on the bed, still and ramrod-straight. It was an interesting quirk of Horde-clones, Adora had noted, from her experiences in watching Kadroh nod off during slumber-parties or when one of the others in Bright Moon had left a bedroom door open when they were taking a nap and she could see their bed walking past – They tended to sleep straight and stiff, like a corpse in a coffin. She supposed it was a side-effect of being engineered to take their rest-periods doing informational uploads and downloads in pods. They weren’t always entirely stiff. Hordak’s head was titled to the side, slack-jawed. Apparently, he’d forgotten to wipe off his eye-makeup last night – making him look even more like a corpse in the dim light.   
  
Wait a minute.   
  
The screens illuminating him did not display the usual readings. The one that Entrapta had explained to Adora as a “cardiogram” screen was flat. She didn’t know entirely what this meant, but she had a sinking feeling in her stomach. She bade Emily to stay put as she crept into the room and came closer.   
  
He wasn’t breathing.   
  
Wait… didn’t Catra say that he didn’t really need to? That he was fine in an oxygen-depletion field? No, wait… both Entrapta and Kadroh had said something about the Galactic Horde having the same kind of atmosphere-requirements as most “humanoid” or “mammal” species – something like that, but with an ability to survive without for limited periods (she supposed that this was why the air inside the Velvet Glove had been breathable). Adora trembled. Regardless of “backups,” this looked bad. She reached out and gingerly took one of Hordak’s arms to take a pulse in the way that Entrapta had taught her.   
  
Nothing. What’s more was that he was cold.   
  
“Oh, no,” she whispered.   
  
She looked to the doorway. She thought of Entrapta in her exhausted rest. No, she decided. She wouldn’t wake her yet, not when there was nothing to be done. Adora winced when she thought of hearing her inevitable cries. Instead she pulled up a chair and sat beside the bed. Emily tucked her legs in and rolled up next to her. Adora put a hand atop her for comfort.   
  
“Well, Hordak…” she began. She forced herself to look at him. It felt like the end of an era crashing down. The once Terror of Etheria lay dead before her. There had been no climatic battle, no She-Ra putting a sword through his gut to set a definitive triumph of Good over Evil. The only thing close to that was whole business with the Heart of Etheria and the purging of Horde Prime. None of it had been straightforward. Everything was gray. Everything was mud.   
  
“Well, Hordak…” she sighed, repeating herself, “I didn’t want it to be like this.”

She issued a mirthless laugh. “Heh. You really struggled through it…didn’t you? Life, I mean. The both of us. There’s so much I just can’t wrap my head around. You… you terrorized us all. Catra and I… grew up with all of these lies about liberating a planet that didn’t want to be liberated… Not that the Princesses were ever perfect, either, but…but…”  
  
She paused, considering her next words, not that they really meant much – a one-sided conversation with a corpse. She clenched her hand out before her. “A part of me… I’m just so _angry_ , you know? What you put us through… I’m never going to forget the first day I saw Thaymore in flames. To think…I was only a day from leading tanks into it, myself. I didn’t even _know_. And the woods…and nature… There was never any green in the Fright Zone, not until recently. Were you really going to make the entire planet like that? We grew up with so much fear… One misstep and we’d be punished, or sent to Beast Island, or Shadow Weaver would hurt us. Shadow Weaver! You just pawned us off on her! Did you even know half of the stuff she did to us? She was also… She took care of us, too. I… got done crying over her. Watching her die felt strange, too.”   
  
Her shoulders slumped. “You had choices when you came here. At least, I like to think that… after some time, at least. You obviously weren’t like the others… of your people, I mean.” Adora smiled a tiny smile. “Somewhere along the way, you got really, really stubborn. You’d have to be to survive…after that, after what I saw on the ship… and with Kadroh, actually. It just went deep, didn’t it? The indoctrination, the confusion, the longing for home even though your ‘home’ was awful. There were times I wished I was home after I’d left your Horde, even though it was drab and dull and came with Shadow Weaver – it’s strange… I miss her a lot. I actually miss her, but…”  
  
Adora shook her head. “And you, and the other commanders and the constant need to stay strong. And… you… you didn’t have anybody, did you? Like I did. You must not have had a Bow and Glimmer to help you figure out what you really wanted to do…who you wanted to be. You craved certainty, didn’t you? And you didn’t find it… and tried to create it.”   
  
She looked toward the door. “You had Entrapta, though… eventually. She’s not… conventional, but, yeah… I suppose it takes an uncommon kind of mind to see past a carefully-cultivated image.” Adora put a hand to her forehead and gripped her hair. “It’s been really strange, these past few days… seeing you like a normal person and…brought down so far! It’s like you’re a completely different person than the shadow I grew up with.” 

Adora put her hands folded over he knees. “I wish you’d made better choices, though. Then again, I wish Catra had, too, but what’s done is done.” She looked at her hands and whispered. “Everyone who died… they aren’t coming back. Everyone who’s been hurt can’t be un-hurt, not even with magic. But… some of your people aren’t coming back, either.” 

Adora remembered vividly when she sliced through Horde-ships in She-Ra form. She remembered destroying robots only, mere drones. She had no memory of killing any Horde-clones herself in single-combat, but she did recall fighting her way to Darla with Catra in tow through the Velvet Glove and leaving fallen clones in her wake. She did not know if they were merely stunned or if some of them, had in fact, been killed. They hadn’t stuck around to see. What she did know was that not every Etherian population-center had fought non-lethally. Even all this time later, once in a while some farmer or traveler would stumble upon a decaying clone-body in the underbrush, desiccated in the desert or frozen on the tundra. Adora considered this carefully. They’d never have a chance to be free.   
  
“You had the chance…you were starting to…finally,” Adora had choked up and tears began to fall from her eyes. “Entrapta told me what happened on the ship, how you had to fight so hard against your brother’s programming - how he had ordered you to kill her, but you turned your canon on him because you chose her, you chose… us… and you chose yourself over him.” 

Adora gave a small chuckle. “She was just so excited when she told me how you tossed him down the shaft, right into the abyss while smiling at her. Maybe killing him didn’t quite entirely work since he possessed you and all, but you did force his hand. Horde Prime wouldn’t have come down to the planet and been vulnerable to She-Ra and to Etheria without you. To think that you… the scourge of Etheria - would be instrumental in saving it – and the universe with it! It was never a direction I thought life would go…”  
  
Adora wiped her eyes and smiled, taking a long look at Hordak’s slack and rather peaceful face. “I suppose two people can’t kill a guy together without forming some kind of special bond.”   
  
She caught her breath. “You’ve been happy here, haven’t you? Puttering in the lab with Entrapta… that bird-watching hobby, which I think looks ridiculous on you, but whatever. The rebuilding projects you’ve been working on… You and Entrapta were trying to bring back Angella! Oh, no… how is that going to go without you here? And the clones… You’ve been counseling them, giving them therapy – and… you’re really the only one who’s been effective in doing that! Kadroh’s good at talking to them, but he isn’t as experienced in making his own life as you are and they’ve been responding to you, and oh, by the moons, Hordak, what are they going to do?”   
  
She sighed, crying and feeling defeated. Before she knew it, she found herself gently brushing a couple of locks of Hordak’s hair out of his closed eyes. “I never regretted sparing you although I never really knew how I felt about it. I’d always felt tense, you know? Like what if I hadn’t done the right thing and you’d try to conquer the planet again? Or tried to become a new Horde Prime? Obviously, that didn’t happen. You were getting better, damn it! You were…helping… or doing what you could. You and Entrapta… You’d…you’d found happiness… yourself. It was your beginning and… it’s just gone now.”   
  
She put her hand back in her lap. “For what it’s worth, even if it was just for a little while, I hope you found your peace. Goodbye, Hordak.”   
  
She sat in silence for several minutes. She was in dread of informing Entrapta. She simply let tears roll down her cheeks. She understood that much of Etheria thought that he deserved this fate. Many would sleep better – and they’d stop side-eying Dryl. At the same time, the sheer injustice of a man getting a new chance at life, having his mind freed, beginning to make good and having it all snatched away from him by circumstances no one could control weighed on her. It was unfair, she decided.   
  
Something moved. Adora startled. She watched in horror as Hordak’s eyes opened to red slits and he slowly closed his mouth and swallowed. He was…alive?   
  
“Hordak?”   
  
He blinked and shifted in his bed.   
  
“Did you… hear me?”   
  
“I heard every word,” he groaned.   
  
The machines started going crazy. Lines on the screens jumped to life and a chorus of beeping sounded. Emily spun and beeped. Hordak twitched and shivered, bringing his arm up to grip his pillow. He gasped for breath and found it short. He was alive, but in mounting distress.   
  
“Emily!” Adora ordered. “Get Entrapta!”   
  
The robot trundled out of the room.   
  
“Hordak, stay with me!”   
  
Adora found her own breath growing short as panic mounted. In just a minute’s time Entrapta barreled into the room. She was upon Hordak in an instant, working with the tubes mounted into his side and back ports and typing into data pads on the bedside machines with tendrils of her hair. She grabbed Hordak beneath the arms with her hair and adjusted his position on the bed.   
  
“Breathe deep, Hordak!” She commanded.   
  
“I… I thought he was dead!” Adora gasped. “I came in here and he was completely still! He didn’t even have a pulse!”   
  
“He went into a dormant-state!” Entrapta explained, rapid-fire as she frantically worked. “His organics failed him and his cybernetic back-ups kicked in! My readings indicate that they’re at the last of their power and aren’t going to keep him for long! I have to get him stable! He’s fading fast!”   
  
“What do I do? What do I do?” Adora yelped.   
  
Hordak’s gaze darted between Adora and Entrapta. “A…adora,” he choked out, “Th-ank you for giving me a chance. En-Entrapta, tha-thank you for making me feel worthy…loved. Fa-Farewell.” He closed his eyes, shook in a full-body tremor, and then relaxed, falling back on his pillows.   
  
“Hordak! No! Don’t leave me! Please!” Entrapta begged him.   
  
Before she realized it, Adora felt a warm stirring. Light shot out from her body, building from her toes and radiating throughout her being. She grew taller. Her hair unbound itself and trailed behind her. She had no need for the sword that appeared in her hand and so stashed it behind her back.   
  
Entrapta stared. Emily stilled. Kadroh had entered the doorway, awakened by the commotion and he stared, eyes wide and sparkling.   
  
“She-Ra!” Entrapta said in awe.   
  
“Ooooh!” Kadroh uttered, clasping his hands to his chest.   
  
Adora, now She-Ra, silently bent over the bed. She cupped Hordak’s cheek. He gasped, suddenly awake, and stared into her eyes. She-Ra’s glow extended out over him. Suddenly, his lungs were filled with breath. The blaring machines fell silent and the tubes in him de-latched themselves and fell to the floor, spilling their fluids. His arms stretched out and ropes of tendon, veins and soft muscle grew out from the elbow and attached themselves like hungry snakes into his wrist. Skin grew full over them.   
  
He sat up, then stood up from the bed, the black bed-dress that he wore lilting slightly in a sudden indoor breeze generated by magic. She-Ra held his face, with both hands this time, pouring healing energy into him. Hordak stood straight and tall. When She-Ra parted from him, smiling, his flesh was fuller than it had been before (although he remained quite skinny); his skin remained discolored, but had a softer, healthier cast.   
  
He caught his breath and looked down at himself, patting his chest and examining his arms.   
  
“Brother!” Kadroh cried. “You’re healthy, brother!”   
  
“Hordak!” Entrapta yelped, leaping over the bed to hug him.   
  
Adora released her power. The She-Ra form faded, leaving her where she was, stunned but smiling. 


	7. At Peace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Horde Prime would not have approved of my bird-watching hobby in the least." 
> 
> "All the more reason to do it."

**Never Let Them See You Bleed  
**  
  
  
 **Chapter 7: At Peace  
**  
  
  
He was never going to have the stamina of a healthy standard Horde-clone. He was always going to get twinges in his bones every now and again, particularly when there was any dramatic change in the weather, he remained thin and his defect would eventually gain on him again. Entrapta had examined Hordak extensively and declared that even with the magic of She-Ra, a lot of what he had was “in the blood,” as he put it or “a glitch in his code” as Entrapta put it. As it was, however, She-Ra’s healing had bought the man a good ten years of life. He would be in not-perfect, but better health for quite a long time, barring any unforeseen disaster. Perhaps, in time, he could be given a boost again. He wasn’t actively dying anymore, but he’d always be fighting.   
  
Currently, he was leading a group-counseling session of Horde-clones. Kadroh was not among them (he was down in the kitchen with the staff happily making lemon-squares). Adora walked through a hallway and passed by the door of the room they were in. She could hear them all laughing. While Kadroh had adapted quickly to joking, a sense of humor seemed to be a difficult thing to grasp for many of them. It made her smile that this particular group, at least, was learning it. Their chortling at whatever joke had been told or whatever release they’d found was punctuated by that distinct chirping-noise they tended to do on occasion.   
  
She stiffened when she heard Hordak’s laughter. It was deep-voiced and would forever have a dark quality to it, but _was he snorting_? He was snort-laughing! Adora couldn’t believe it! She idly wondered if Emily ever recorded him laughing to play back for his embarrassment later. Had Imp ever done that? She decided that yes, yes he did because such a snort-laugh was just too funny not to take advantage of!   
  
Adora wandered out to a balcony – the same one that she and Hordak had shared a conversation on before – and scanned the sky to see if the silver-tailed hawk that had a roost nearby was on the wing today. She planned on packing up soon and calling Swift Wind to take her back to Bright Moon. Kadroh had already expressed a desire to stay on in Dryl for a while, after which he said that he might join the flock of nomadic clones until he found another area that had interesting cookery for him to discover and learn.  
  
Adora let the breeze play with her hair for a while as she leaned on the balcony rail. Her attention shifted when she heard sharp footsteps behind her. She turned around.   
  
“Hordak.”  
  
“Hmm.”   
  
He wasn’t in his armor, but, instead, a simple sleeveless black dress that showed off his discolored but healed and whole arms.   
  
“So…uh… how do you feel?”   
  
He smiled at her. “Like I could conquer the planet.”   
  
Adora stepped back, bracing against the rail. She narrowed her eyes and shot her hand out, a light sparking within it.   
  
“I was joking,” Hordak intoned.   
  
Adora lowered her hand, calling down her summoning of She-Ra.   
  
“You shouldn’t joke about such things!” Adora retorted, breathing a sigh of relief.   
  
“Dear Adora…your reaction was priceless.”   
  
“So, how are you feeling and DON’T say that you want to conquer the world!”   
  
“Better, much better, thank you. I cannot remember the last time I was in this little pain.”   
  
“A little pain?”  
  
“My joints are stiff. I do not think that there is anything that can be done about it outside of wearing Entrapta’s armors and orthopedic-devices.”   
  
“I am sorry that She-Ra could not restore you entirely.”   
  
“Do not worry about it. You gave me my life back and even that was more than I would have asked and more than I’d deserved.”   
  
“I trust that you will use it well. I am standing by if you do not.”   
  
“Understood.”   
  
Both were alerted by the scream of a hawk. It glided on the winds outside the castle, its metallic-feathered tail shining through the storm-light of the overcast sky. Hordak stepped to stand next to Adora. He stood in a relaxed fashion, watching it with her.   
  
“There was a knowledge buried deep in the hive-mind,” he began. “It was something that was forbidden to talk about or even think upon, passed to us as merely a myth, a lie that had infected us somehow by the assimilation of some lesser race that was later destroyed. We have since revisited the records – my brothers and I.”   
  
“What did you find?” Adora asked.   
  
Hordak gave her a small chuckle. “Horde Prime would not have approved of my bird-watching hobby in the least.”   
  
“All the more reason to do it,” she said, giving him a cheeky grin.   
  
“Horde Prime hated anything that could fly under its own power. He was the Regent of the Seven Skies and none were to fly higher than him.”   
  
“He wouldn’t have liked Swifty, then.”   
  
“Your steed? Definitely not.”   
  
Hordak hung his head and slowly blinked. His ears dipped. “He stole our wings.”   
  
“Huh?”   
  
“Do you know why the Horde’s battle-crest was a pair of wings?”   
  
“I wasn’t sure that was what they actually were,” Adora answered hesitantly. “I mean, they look like bat-wings or dragon-wings, but when I saw Horde Prime with his open-chest, I thought it was just a take after his clothing?”   
  
“In the lost-data, the old tales… my people once had wings. Our progenitors, I mean, before Horde Prime ‘uplifted’ us by ‘uplifting’ himself and birthing us from himself.”   
  
Hordak was grinning deviously. “It seems that he had a ‘defect.’ He had no wings. We both knew his true form, in the end. Still, my brothers and I are the last of our kind, inexorably altered in his corporeal image, his ‘wings’ a reminder of what he had the power to take – a bitter memory that he allowed to live on in myth even as he made sure that we regarded it as only that and feared to speak of it. He allowed that echo, however. He could have erased it from us completely, but chose not to. I do not know the reason.”   
  
“Maybe he couldn’t,” Adora offered. “Maybe it was like Krytis. We learned of that planet from Kadroh when he let slip about it. He knew of it even though he insisted that it did not exist. He had a clear conflict between what he knew and what he was supposed to believe.”   
  
“Krytis,” Hordak sighed, “I have no memory of the place. I do not know if this indicates a recent failure at conquest on Horde Prime’s part – as in, an event that occurred during my time trapped on this planet within Despondos, or if I was there and simply have no recollection of it. My memories are… jarred… gapped… unreliable. It is likely that I have been ‘reconditioned’ a number of times. Only certain memories have come back to me, most of them centered on Etheria.”   
  
“Important memories.”   
  
Hordak turned his head to spare a glance at Entrapta bouncing past the doorway on some errand – retrieving a tool or headed straight for a pan of Kadroh’s tiny-sized lemon-squares. “Indeed,” he purred.   
  
“You know,” Adora ventured, “If you continue to show that don’t have any more thirst for conquest, you know… you and Entrapta _not_ making weapons of mass-destruction and stuff – and no, I don’t care how much fun she thinks it would be – I can put in a good word for you? Open up the ability to travel? Perhaps it would give you an opportunity to make more friends? I just… think it would be good for you.”   
  
“Perhaps in a generation’s time, or a decade’s.” Hordak folded his hands behind his back. “Not now. Too much damage has been done. In fact, I would prefer that the world not know of my healing. I shall remain quiet, undisturbed. Allow your Princesses and their people to assume what they will of me. If they think I have succumbed to illness and am deceased, they may be put at ease.”   
  
“That is rather harsh,” Adora answered. “And people are bound to find out that you’re still with us. I mean…with the clones coming to you for help…” Adora put her hand to her forehead for a moment. “I never would have imagined it before – you becoming a therapist! And with…anyone coming here to see Entrapta. I assume that Scorpia visits every now and again?”   
  
“She does, often alone and I have… had a lot of reconciliation to do with her then, and stories of the past. I hide in one of the laboratories when she brings the flower-one along, or check up on one of the mines.”   
  
“Perfuma?”   
  
“I find her…intimidating.”   
  
Adora’s eyes went wide. “Huh? Really?”   
  
“She has far more power than she knows. I also find her personality rather vexing, to tell the truth. Scorpia seems to be able to keep her in line when they share recreation with Entrapta. In any case, I do believe that I can keep up the appearance of my demise to others. It would guarantee peace.”   
  
“I’ll not lie about it if asked,” Adora confessed, but she smiled at him. “But I can tell anyone who asks with a reasonable amount of honesty, I think, that you are no longer a threat.”   
  
Hordak held a gentle smile as he looked back toward the interior of the castle at a purple pigtail bobbing past a window. Adora followed his gaze and listened as Entrapta was talking with the voices of Robin, Jerome and a few other people she did not recognize.  
  
“I will tell them that they don’t have anything to worry about from you.”   
  
______________  
  
END.


End file.
